1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the art of electrical connectors and more particularly, to an electrical connector having a contact element for elastically movable connecting with a complementary electrical connector.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Spring contacts for electrical interfaces are well known in the prior art and represent a wide family of technology for providing interconnection between electrical contact elements. A known type of such a conventional connector (U.S. C1. 439/700) is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,524,140 B2 issued to Takagi et al. on Feb. 25, 2003. The Takagi connector comprises an insulator and a plurality of conductive contacts received in the insulator. Each contact includes a contacting arm having a contact point extending beyond a mating opening of the insulator, and a spring portion integrally formed with the contacting arm. The insulator has a stopper portion adjacent to the mating opening thereof for elastically pressing a lower portion of the spring portion inwardly, thereby maintaining the contacting arm in a normal downwardly inclined state. When the connector mates with a complementary connector, the contacting arm of each contact is depressed inwardly and is free from the pressing of the stopper portion of the insulator, thereby moving upwardly relative to the complementary connector. As a result, the contacting arm upwardly goes back to a horizontal state.
However, being always pressed by the stopper portion of the housing, the spring portions of the contacts of the Takagi connector may be distorted or become robustless after repeatedly mating with the complementary connector, thus the contacts can not electrically and reliably connect with mating contacts of the complementary connector. Moreover, it is desired that the contacting portions be clean and having a low contact resistance. The Takagi contacts move from the inclined position to the horizontal position to provide the so-called “wiping effect”. Due to elastic distortion of the Takagi contacts, a distance between inclined position and the horizontal position will be decreased, thus rendering unsatisfied wiping effects.
Hence, an electrical connector with improved contacts is desired to overcome the foregoing shortcomings.